Critical Chain Project Management

Last updated at: 26/10/2018 05:40 AM

Critical Chain Project Management

Critical chain project management is an approach used by project managers to plan and manage projects paying more attention to the physical and human resources needed to complete the project tasks. This method which is referred to as CCPM uses the theory of constraints placed on objects.one of the constraint that must be the figure in the entire mix is time. This is a project and you should know that tasks become project when the task has to be completed in a given time frame. Project managers and the team are given a specific amount of time to complete a project according to requirements. Improving the throughput and completion rates of company projects is the overall goal of critical chain project management. The project leaders are able to identify system constraint and the available resources for finding project solution based on their in-depth knowledge of the first three out of the five focusing steps.

The critical chain project management is also referred to as critical chain method (CCM); it is the product of the theory of constraint (TOC) that was developed by Eliyahu Goldratt to schedule and manage production. The major objective of the theory of constraint is to focus on identifying a problem at the early stage of the problem and fixing it. Likewise critical chain project management focus on finding solutions to bottlenecks.

During critical chain project management, some tasks are located on the chain, these tasks are given priority over every other activity that is taking place in order to exploit the present constraint. At this point, the project can be well planned and managed. This process ensures that resources are available and ready to be used when it is time for the critical tasks to begin. In effect, all other tasks are moved to the critical chain. This is very crucial because it allows the project to be completed within the allocated time and follows a sequence of execution.

Irrespective of the nature and size of a project at hand, all project plans should pass through resource leveling. The longest sequence of resource that is constrained should be regarded as the critical chain. In a situation where there are many projects to be managed, all projects in questions must undergo resource leveling. It is often difficult to identify a single drum resource that can serve as a constraint across all projects and stagger them based on the availability of that particular drum resource.

Using critical chain management, the rate of completing projects is high and with a greater scheduling reliability. The following points show the reason why traditional project scheduling is not effective when compare to critical chain project scheduling.

The purpose of padding tasks duration is to ensure that the probability of completing tasks is high. The problem associated with this task padding is that much time is wasted in order to ensure tasks are completed such as waiting until the last task is carried out. As a result of this, all safety time that need to be wasted should happen at the beginning so that if you come against any challenges , the tasks overruns.

Starting of work as early as possible even when they are not planned or scheduled could result in worst-case estimates. When workers give worst-case estimates, they are not just busy on a single task; they complete many tasks as early as possible switching between these tasks. At the end of the day, they will be able to complete the tasks but takes a long time and disorganized.

To manage a critical chain schedule, some specific steps are followed which are stated below:

Reduce activity duration estimates by half: - For the fact we know activity duration is normal estimates, which contains a high probability and excessive safety time. Estimations are done based on fifty percent probability by reducing it to half. This protection is removed from individual tasks is combined and strategically inserted as a buffer in the project.

Level the project plan by eliminating the resource contentions: - After eliminating the resource contentions, the critical chain can then be recognized as the longest chain of path and resource dependencies.

Aggregating the critical chain contingency time by inserting the project buffer (initially half of the critical chain length)
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Use the resource buffer to protect the critical chain from resource unavailability: - Resource buffer is inserted in the right place to ensure the arrival of critical chain resources.

Size and place Feeding Buffers on all paths that feed the Critical Chain: - Accumulation of negative variations is eliminated by feeding buffers. This help to protect the critical chain.

Start gating tasks as late as possible: - Gating tasks are tasks are tasks that have no tasks running before its commencement. This helps in preventing multi-tasking.

Use buffer management to control the plan: - A buffer serves as an important tool which provides information to the project manager
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To adopt critical chain project management, there are specialized construction management contractor software that is required to implement this strategy and this contractor software works with most popular construction project management software like CONSYSA.